Digital communication over noisy channels (e.g., over power lines and wireless mediums) poses a challenge to reliable, error-free data transfer between a transmitter and receiver. Portions of the transmitted data may be corrupted by noise, resulting in errors at a receiver. Some methods for communicating data symbols over noisy channels request retransmission of any data symbols received in error. These methods rely on the probability that the retransmission will occur during less-noisy channel conditions and the data will be received error-free. However, if the channel is still excessively noisy, there will likely be errors in the retransmitted symbols, and nothing would be gained by the retransmission.